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The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

INTRODUCTION

"In addition to developing the hypothetical syllogism, Stoic logic also elaborated categories, which likewise stand in contrast to Aristotelian thought. The Stoics teach that there
are four categories: substance, quality, disposition, and relative disposition.(140) Rather than being horizontal, signifying aspects of an enduring substance which are accidental and which can be
shorn from it without destroying its essence, the Stoic categories are vertical. They move from lesser to greater levels of concreteness. None is accidental; all must be present in a given reality if
that reality is to be grasped in all its individuality. Substance denotes the materiality of a thing and is possessed by everything except the incorporeals. Quality denotes the way in which matter is
organized to form an individual being. Disposition includes times, places, actions, size, and color. It describes the particular situation and attributes of the individual. All the features covered
by the category of disposition, including color,(141) are regarded by the Stoics as inherent in the individual. This view harmonizes with the doctrine in Stoic physics that bodies create their own
extension and their own time and space, so to speak, through their tonos and activity. Relative disposition denotes the way that an individual thing is related to other phenomena. None of
the four Stoic categories can be removed from an individual being without that being ceasing to be itself. At each level of specificity the categories refer to something integral to the individual
being's reality. The categories mirror the physics of concrete individual events taught by the Stoa. Although officially classified under logic, the Stoic categories are really pertinent to physics
since they are modes of expressing reality.(142)"